January 31, 2013

Author:

Jason R. Briggs

Publisher:

No Starch Press (2012)

For Kids Aged 10+ (And Their Parents)
The code in this book runs on almost anything: Windows, Mac, Linux, even an OLPC laptop or Raspberry Pi!

Python is a powerful, expressive programming language that’s easy to learn and fun to use! But books about learning to program in Python can be kind of dull, gray, and boring, and that’s no fun for anyone.

August 24, 2011

Perhaps the greatest physicist of the second half of the twentieth century, Richard Feynman changed the way we think about quantum mechanics, the most perplexing of all physical theories. Here Lawrence M. Krauss, himself a theoretical physicist and best-selling author, offers a unique scientific biography: a rollicking narrative coupled with clear… read more

June 4, 2014

Author:

Shan Gao

Publisher:

Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (2014)

Notwithstanding the great advances in modern science, there are some deep, unexplained mysteries, and our current world view is still fragmented. On the one hand, the two pillars of modern physics, namely relativity and quantum theory, are not only incomplete respectively but also incompatible with each other. Moreover, they are difficult to understand and even incomprehensible. On the other hand, there is a deeper mystery concerning our most familiar… read more

January 16, 2012

Author:

Susan Cain

Publisher:

Crown (2012)

Amazon | At least one-third of the people we know are introverts. They are the ones who prefer listening to speaking, reading to partying; who innovate and create but dislike self-promotion; who favor working on their own over brainstorming in teams. Although they are often labeled “quiet,” it is to introverts that we owe many of the great contributions to society — from van Gogh’s sunflowers to the invention… read more

May 6, 2013

K. Eric Drexler is known as the founding father of nanotechnology—the science of engineering on a molecular level. In Radical Abundance, he shows how rapid scientific progress is about to change our world. Thanks to atomically precise manufacturing, we will soon have the power to produce radically more of what people want, and at a lower cost. The result will shake the very foundations of our economy and… read more

April 9, 2009

Washington Post reporter Garreau takes readers on a cross-country trip into the future as he interviews scientists and other thinkers grappling with the implications of our newfound—and, to some, frightening—knowledge of the genome. Highlighting what he calls “the Curve”—the rate of exponential change in technology—Garreau (Edge City: Life on the New Frontier) breaks the central part of his book into four scenarios. In “Heaven,” genetic engineering will… read more

June 13, 2012

Author:

Elaine Fox

Publisher:

Basic Books (2012)

Are you optimistic or pessimistic? Glass half-full or half-empty? Do you look on the bright side or turn towards the dark? These are easy questions for most of us to answer, because our personality types are hard-wired into our brains.

As pioneering psychologist and neuroscientist Elaine Fox has discovered, our outlook on life reflects our primal inclination to seek pleasure or avoid danger — inclinations that, in many… read more

November 10, 2010

Author:

Jane McGonigal

Publisher:

The Penguin Press HC (2011)

Amazon | More than 174 million Americans are gamers, and the average young person in the United States will spend ten thousand hours gaming by the age of twenty-one. According to world-renowned game designer Jane McGonigal, the reason for this mass exodus to virtual worlds is that videogames are increasingly fulfilling genuine human needs. In this groundbreaking exploration of the power and future of gaming, McGonigal reveals… read more

October 4, 2011

Author:

Neal Stephenson

Publisher:

William Morrow (2011)

Amazon | Neal Stephenson, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Anathem, returns to the terrain of his groundbreaking novels Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, and Cryptonomicon to deliver a high-intensity, high-stakes, action-packed adventure thriller in which a tech entrepreneur gets caught in the very real crossfire of his own online war game.

In 1972, Richard Forthrast, the black sheep of an Iowa farming clan, fled to the mountains of British… read more

November 22, 2013

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt | A groundbreaking work, Redesigning Humans tackles the controversial subject of engineering the human germline — the process of permanently altering the genetic code of an individual so that the changes are passed on to the offspring. Gregory Stock, an expert on the implications of recent advances in reproductive biology, has glimpsed the inevitable future of biomedical engineering.

Within decades, Stock asserts, technological advances will bring… read more

August 17, 2012

Author:

George M. Church, Ed Regis

Publisher:

Basic Books (2012)

Nathan Myhrvold, Founder and CEO, Intellectual Ventures:
“A delightfully opinionated, visionary and controversial romp through synthetic biology, which is one of the most important technologies of our time.”

Eric Topol, Professor of Genomics, The Scripps Research Institute, and author of The Creative Destruction of Medicine:
“Literally reinventing nature could provide solutions to intractable problems with the energy supply, global warming, and human health. In Regenesis, George… read more

January 12, 2012

Author:

Michael Nielsen

Publisher:

Princeton University Press (2011)

Amazon | In Reinventing Discovery, Michael Nielsen argues that we are living at the dawn of the most dramatic change in science in more than 300 years. This change is being driven by powerful new cognitive tools, enabled by the internet, which are greatly accelerating scientific discovery. There are many books about how the internet is changing business or the workplace or government. But this is the first… read more

July 6, 2011

Author:

Deepak Chopra

Publisher:

Three Rivers Press (2010)

Amazon | Fifteen years after his #1 New York Times bestseller, Ageless Body, Timeless Mind, Deepak Chopra revisits “the forgotten miracle” — the body’s infinite capacity for change and renewal. You cannot take advantage of this miracle, Chopra says, unless you are willing to completely reinvent your body, transforming it from a material object to a dynamic, flowing process. “Your physical body is a fiction,” Chopra contends. Every cell is… read more